Last night was my first night with the Jubilee Warriors, one of my church’s men’s softball teams. I believe that I have found a new passion. Actually, not so much a new passion, rather a much-renewed passion for playing baseball under the lights!

It was a good game. The Warriors had never met each other before, so there was a period of adjustment and introduction and then we played and played hard! We jumped to an early lead and held it for a couple of innings. Then during the 3rd inning they filled the bases with no body out. They shortened our lead to only one with two outs. Then I dropped the third out. Dropped it. Flat dropped it. It was my first fly ball with a softball, ever, and there is some significant backspin on a softball. After the drop they put 6 more runs across the plate.

As we left the field anxious to get that lead back, the field official decided that the lightning that was approximately 300 miles away was endangering our lives and attempted to call our game. After further deliberation with myself and a coach from the other team, she decided to let us finish.

We gave it a valiant effort, I came up with two outs, we had shrunk the lead to 4 and there were two men on base. I tripled to the right center gap and then scored on a base hit. That run brought us within one and that is where the game ended. We finished down 17-16. However, none of us felt dejected. Rather we felt that we did a pretty good job for never having met each other, throwing together a line up based on nothing and basically just randomly placing people in the field.

I really enjoyed myself. My night brought 3 for 4, with two runs scored and a play at the plate that I lost. I hit a single, double and triple and flied out to center. This was a decent evening, I suppose. The one thing that I don’t like at all is the error. Out of 7 attempts, I committed one error, therefore brining my fielding percentage to an unacceptable 0.857. However, it was the first game.GO WARRIORS!

The reaction to the President’s speech last night on immigration reform by many of the conservative blogosphere has been swift, harsh and blunt.

Many, many conservatives are very angry with the President for his speech last night. They feel that not only did he hold back from saying what they wanted him to say; build a fence, deport many illegals, etc., but that he has no intention of backing any of what he said up with actual action.

His deployment of National Guard troops is being seen as mainly a political ruse. And many conservatives feel that the President is attempting to run some sort of con game. We shall see.

Got home, read speech. Total blather, and insincere and dishonest to boot. Tried to give impression the govt. has been struggling with the issue for years. In fact they have done next to nothing. Elaborate schemes for new kinds of immigration categories (there are a dozen or more already!) and employee-verification schemes, when we all know the federal govt. couldn’t find its rear end with both hands. Complete gas. Nothing will come of this.Demand clear, unequivocal action. Demand a wall. Anything less is smoke and fudge. The elites — Dem, GOP, Prez — are determined to pull a con job on us. Don’t fall for it. Let’s have something we can see, plain, clear, and indisputable. A wall! A wall!

President Bush did exactly what he had to do tonight: Hit the middle, agreeing to the fence, to a large increase in Border Patrol personnel and funding, tamper-proof identification, National Guard back-up of ICE for at least a year, the end of catch-and-release, blunt talk on the impossibility of mass deportation, an insistence on English, and a commitment to a guest worker program that will take pressure off enforcement by funneling large numbers of immigrant workers into the legal line.

Now the Senate needs to add specifics (especially on the fence) and get to the conference committee asap. There is no excuse for delay.

UPDATE: My interview with Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Julie Myers staggered me, undoing in a handful of minutes my confidence in the president’s commitment to border security first. Either the president’s team had not communicated effectively with sub-cabinet appointees about the fence, or the president doesn’t really believe in the fence, because Assistant Secretary Myers is clearly not a proponent of the fence.

However, as you can see in that last article by the Wash. Post, there are some conservatives who are thinking positive things about this speech. Overall, people are still optimistic about our country, however many of them do not think that the president is going to do what it takes to secure our border and protect our country.

This was the speech that we needed to hear from the president. Absolutely. This presented a rational, clear problem definition as well as a well-outlined solution. This speech has the potential to unite not only the House on this issue, but also the Senate and actually produce some results. This speech was the necessary statement that clearly communicated the very things that most people want.

One thing we have seen from the president, if he says it, he will do it.

I thoroughly loved his clear statements that this is a problem. His statement that this country can be both a lawful country and a welcoming one.

Politically this was the statement that the president needed to give. It was also the one that this country needed to actually move productively on this issue. He hit this issue right on the head. He hit the issue right in the middle, right where most Americans are thinking already.

His negation of ‘mass deportation’ was an important moment.

Here is some of the blogosphere’s reaction: (more updates throughout the evening.)

UPDATE: It was a very good thing for the president to stress the importance of English in this country. It is vital that these immigrants assimilate into our society, both for us and for them. It is crucial for them to succeed. America wants immigrants to succeed.

I agree that at times they do things that are not terribly friendly for our country. Such as encouraging extreme amounts of immigration, legal or otherwise, into our country. However, we must NOT think of Mexico as our enemy. We must do everything that we can to refrain from thinking about Mexicans as the enemy. They are not.

The United States is pro-immigration. Everyone would agree with this, however, we MUST keep our country’s people (immigrants are included in this, obviously) safe.